Mike Barger Discusses What it Takes to Lead During a Time of Crisis, Identifying Stakeholders, and Communicating with Your Employees

For any business, having a great leader during the good times is ideal. Having a great leader during times of crisis, however, is essential. Mike Barger, clinical assistant professor of business administration at the Stephen M. Ross School of Business, teaches U-M students about leadership during organizational crisis. High stakes situations are something Barger, a Navy veteran, is deeply familiar with. Professionally, Barger was a founding member and senior pilot for JetBlue Airways.

With his open online course “High-Stakes Leadership:  Leading in Times of Crisis,” Barger brings learners into the world of crisis management and organizational resilience. The course also features lessons learned from his days at JetBlue, and with the help of virtual, interactive technologies, brings learners into a crisis environment as a virtual executive of JetBlue who must handle a crisis from the perspective of customer and employee relations. 

The interactive simulation includes the creation of a virtual airport where your virtual avatar engages with customer complaints at a boarding gate as well as employees handling the stressful situation in a virtual lounge. 

Barger talks about the power of learning in a virtual environment, the importance of identifying stakeholders during a crisis, and effectively engaging with your employees during high-stakes situations. 

High Stakes Leadership: Leading in Times of Crisis

4 weeks

Course

This course has been designed to help leaders, like you, learn how to effectively navigate the challenges of significant organizational disruptions. As a participant in this…

It is one thing to read about responding to a crisis, and it’s another to experience a crisis in real time. How do you feel like the virtual simulations enhance the course and learners’ abilities to understand its core concepts? 

Mike Barger: Crisis leadership effectiveness is largely a function of how well leaders can effectively engage stakeholders as the scenario plays out. One of the most challenging aspects of leading through a crisis is dealing with the ever present anxiety that leaders feel during stakeholder engagement, as emotions run high and increasing pressure makes it difficult for leaders to think on their feet. The core premise of our virtual crisis leadership simulation is to recreate, at least to some degree, the tension a leader might actually experience when facing highly emotional, sometimes even hostile stakeholders. 

What was your experience like working with the Extended Reality team and the rest of CAI as they worked with you to build these virtual simulations?

MB: I found the experience of working with the Extended Reality team at CAI wonderfully satisfying and productive. We are all experimenting with a great number of new technologies, which create both incredible discoveries and obstacles to be overcome. My engagement was truly a partnership as we all learned a lot together and will continue to learn as we further develop our end product.

The course spends a lot of time talking about stakeholders and how to identify and engage with them. Why is this such an important part of handling a crisis? 

MB: Experienced business leaders know the first priority during a major disruption or crisis is to act swiftly and decisively to address the immediate situation – minimizing the extent of impact or damage as quickly as possible. What they often fail to realize, however, is that every disruption threatens the ‘value proposition’ of some number of stakeholders. Will employees lose their jobs? Will customers be unable to receive or use the goods or services they have purchased? Will investors suffer a loss on their investment? Will community leaders have to respond to an adverse impact on their constituents?

Leaders must recognize that the impact of a disruption extends far beyond their own team. Dealing with stakeholder concerns during and after disruptions will become one of the most important activities undertaken by high-stakes leaders to preserve or regain the trust and confidence of these stakeholders going forward. To underscore this lesson, the course spends a great deal of time helping participants learn why and how to do so. 

The course also covers the importance of communicating with employees during an organizational crisis, and that is the basis for the simulation. Do you think employees are often overlooked when a crisis emerges, and why did you want to make that such a key part of the course and the first simulation?

MB: During an enterprise crisis, leaders often incorrectly assume that people in the company know what’s going on and/or that employees will naturally have full confidence in the leadership team to quickly resolve any issue that requires their attention. While both of these may be true, the reality of today’s business environment is that during every crisis, information, opinion, conjecture, theory, misrepresentation of facts, and even intentionally hurtful messaging will be accessible to any interested party.

Given this reality, the best path for leaders is to get in front of company employees as soon as possible, sharing a high-level summary of the situation and their immediate course of action. This is also a great time to claim “ownership” of the communication channel for the duration of the event. For example: “We know it will take some time to fully resolve this crisis and regain the confidence of our many stakeholders. So, every day at 5:00pm, expect to hear from me as I share information about the work being done, the progress we’re making, and our next set of milestones.”  

Engaging internal stakeholders – employees – in this way will not only help preserve their confidence in leadership, but it will also put your employees in a position to answer questions that come from other stakeholders.

For those who are just entering leadership positions or maybe have never been in a high-stakes crisis situation before, what is the biggest takeaway you hope they get from this course?

MB: Stakeholders are your greatest assets in good times and bad. To run a great business, you need to understand where and how your stakeholders find value in their relationships with you. Developing relationships with these stakeholders will not only help you serve them more effectively in the best of times, but will provide a bank of trust capital that you’ll need to draw from during the most difficult of times. This course is about helping you think through who your stakeholders are and how you can develop relationships with them to become the best leader you can be, irrespective of the circumstances.